National Parks will face severe cuts if Congress doesn't meet its March 1 budget deadline, but nobody's saying for sure how parks such as Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains National Park would fare.

Like other federal agencies, national parks may face across-the-board 5 percent budget cuts if a nationwide sequestration becomes reality.

Jeffrey Olson, chief spokesman for the National Park Service, said the public "should be prepared for reduced hours and services provided by National Park Service employees."
And when asked what this might mean for the national parks closest to Carlsbad, superintendents John Benjamin, of Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and Dennis Vasquez, of Guadalupe Mountains National Park, declined to answer. Both said they had been ordered to direct all questions on the matter to the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C.

Likewise, officials with the Bureau of Land Management also said they couldn't speak on the matter. Jim Stovall, manager of the BLM's Carlsbad Field Office, and Public Affairs Manager Theresa Herrera said they have not been told how the pending budget cuts will affect their organization. The BLM manages much of the 1.6 million acres of federal lands within Eddy County's borders.
"We don't know if it's going to relate to contracts or programs," Stovall said. "We haven't been given much guidance on anything at this time."
And maybe that's because no one knows for sure what will happen if a Congressional agreement is not reached.

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On Feb. 8, the White House released a statement about the pending sequestration, listing inevitable cuts to education, security and mental health, among other government programs. Though national parks were not mentioned, Eric Layer, communications director for Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), said the nation's parks are also in danger of losing funding.

According to Layer, Pearce is against the sequestration as it relates to national parks.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park Ranger Gosia Allison-Kosior visits with Lee and Sandy Smigiel, of New York, in this April 2012 file photo. National Parks officials could be forced to cut staffing and visitation hours if sequestration becomes a reality. (File photo)

"Funding for our national parks is important to New Mexico, which is one of the reasons Rep. Pearce has consistently opposed the president's haphazard sequestration plan," Layer wrote in an email. "Rep. Pearce will continue to work in Congress to find productive solutions that address Washington's out-of-control spending without cutting the programs important to New Mexico."

Any cuts to the national parks budget could negatively affect the local communities and businesses that rely on recreation to support their livelihoods, Olson said. That includes Carlsbad.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park averages about half a million visitors each year, and many of those tourists stay in Carlsbad hotels during their visits. And that's only a part of the 1.5 million tourists that visit the 13 national parks and monuments in New Mexico each year, according to New Mexico Tourism Director of Marketing and Communications Veronica Valencia.

The caverns' annual budget for 2010 was about $6.3 million. A 5 percent cut would mean a loss of more than $300,000, according to that figure.

"Some 280 million people visit national parks each year, and their spending alone supports 247,000 jobs and a $31 billion economic impact, mostly in local economies," Olson said.

But with the proposed 5 percent budget cuts, parks will have to lessen their hours of operation and their visiting seasons, which may also result in employee cuts.